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Does New Development For Mac OS X Make Sense?
DLWormwood wonders: "As a long time Mac developer, originally as a hobbyist and then a professional, I'm feeling pessimistic about the future of the platform now that Apple is embracing Intel and abandoning the few remaining 'Mac' technologies (like the PowerPC and OpenTransport) left to the platform. With the high likelihood that these new Macs will offer a full speed version of Virtual PC and (what I think is) the almost assurance that some clever hacker will make 'X for x86' run on commodity hardware, I'm doubting the willingness of most IT and development houses to even give the Carbon and Cocoa APIs a first glance. (If it wasn't for the poor past performance of VPC, I would not have gotten my first Mac programming job.) Can anybody with a more optimistic view think of a scenario where a modern development house will do Mac development in an age where the help desk will just say either 'switch boot to Windows/Linux' or 'run Virtual PC?'"
That trolling motor is just red lined. What a bunch of crap.
Apple saw the writing on the wall and moved to a CPU supplier that can fulfill their needs. That they get a higher speeds, dual cores, and lower prices also is just icing on the cake to them.
just so you know, higher frequencies do not mean higher speeds. There are a lot of things that can be factored into the speed equation such as front-side bus bandwidth, the amount of on-chip cache, instruction pipelines, how efficient branch prediction is, and so much more.
when it comes to overall chip design, Intel are the bottom of the barrel.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
It was 4 Intel P4s, not just 1.
Aopen tried to make an x86 mac-mini competitor-- it was $100 more
It would be difficult to find a processor as slow as a mac mini in the x86 world that was still in production.
What processor did AOpen use? To really emulate a mac mini, you'd have to have Intel still producing Pentium II class chips, which they don't.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Ah, yes, but could Microsoft do it? Then it would be pretty official. And, if MS made the bootloader, Apple couldn't really take away dual-booting, could they?
I personally would love this. I'm a person who isn't overly-impressed with Mac OS X (although I think it is overall a step up from Windows). I also really like developing for the Windows platform. But I really like the design of the Powerbook. I feel it suits my tastes and needs better than any other laptop on the market. If I could run "Longhorn for Mac" someday, I'd be in heaven.
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Well, Steve Jobs had to fuck something up eventually, right? Not that he hasn't worked magic before, just that everyone screws up once in awhile.
And it's not exactly unfair to say that he values looks over substance... just that he had enough style to make up for the disadvantages of that approach. I guess it was inevitable that the mouthbreathers out there and their marketing propaganda "clockspeed = how fast it is" would hijack the decision-making process at Apple.
Oh well, there's always Cell.
"OS X is much more intuitive and overall an easier to use operating system"
Um, have you _used_ OS X? Good god, man. It is no such thing.
OS X throws away most of the Apple HIG, and is a delightful mish-mash of styles. It's awful. It makes a delightful demo, what with the Lickability Factor up around 11. But after having used it for a year (and, mind you, I've been a raving fanboy myself, first of System 7, then of OS/2) I have to say "no thanks". OS X tries to play close to the Mac ideal, but fails miserably.
Also, Have you ever worked at a helpdesk? Working at a helpdesk is entirely involved around Getting the User Off The Phone so You Can Bill the Client. Which means telling them what they should do. Because what they want to do is long, rambling, pointless and usually impossible.
Thirdly, Have you ever bought a mac? The Mac has never been about "flexibility in pricing" it's been about "Making money on low volume by high margins". Fully expect Apple to charge not a penny less for Intel-based computers, and pocket the sweet, sweet profits.
apple is dead now.
Rock on!
The myth that Apple Corporation has some sort of brilliant hardware engineering competency is over. It's the pretty industrial design and intuitive software that's their strength.
I love your implication that there is some sort of secret thing apple corporation knows about "motherboard design" that nobody else knows.
Intel designs motherboards with intel chipsets and auxilary processors for intel CPUs and they are great. If you aren't interested in gaming you'll also have an intel video adapter on there too - do you think they are just throwing crap together or don't know how to handle Intel processors as well as Apple?
Apple doesn't need to design or manufacture any of the hardware at all, other than the inevitable beautful chasis.
Whether or not Apple Corp restricts their operating system will not be an engineering or technological barrier, it will be an arbitrary one.